Black and grey skull with a snake coiled around it on the forearm of a person in a dark suit, against a snowy background.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Skull and snake on a forearm

Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A person in a dark suit holds up one forearm, which carries a black and grey tattoo of a skull with a snake coiling around it. The skull is shaded with soft grey tones and the snake has defined scales and body outlines. The tattoo sits centrally on the arm against a pale background with bare trees.

Forearm Skull Snake

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The net-mender's daughter had been counting the boats home for an hour when the grey one came in without its lamp lit. Her father said the sea had taken its light, which was the sort of thing he said when he didn't want to say the other thing.

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The harbour at Scarrow Bay had a bone-coloured wall and a fish market that smelled of tar. Everyone knew the old tale of the snake that lived under the breakwater, coiled round the skull of a drowned priest, feeding on whatever the tide forgot. Nobody had seen it in forty years. Children dared each other to touch the wet stones where it was said to sleep.

Maren went down the slipway at dusk with a candle in a jar and a heel of bread. She did not believe in the snake. She believed in the skull, because her father had once pulled one up in a trawl net, pale and smooth as a river pebble. The crew had wanted to throw it back. He had kept it on the windowsill instead.

Under the wall the water was black and still. A coil moved, slow as rope, and the snake lifted its head beside the candle. It looked at the bread, then at her, and she understood it had only ever been waiting for someone to ask where the boats had gone. She asked. It told her, and she climbed back to the quay before the bell, the grey boat's crew following in sodden coats, every one of them alive, cold and furious to be home.